Whitehot Magazine

Lick My Wounds: Kelly Boehmer’s soft sculptures tap into an anxiety familiar to all of us

 Floral Bite, Taxidermy, faux fur, yarn, glitter, and synthetic, flowers on canvas, 14 inches x 11 inches, 2022

 

By STEPHANIE HUBER August 7, 2024

Kelly Boehmer’s soft sculptures tap into an anxiety familiar to all of us—the type that originates in early childhood, and whose peaks and valleys can intensify with the premature arrival of major life stressors. The thrilling, sensory decadence of her vibrant plush creatures nod to the twinned potentials of Jim Henson’s monsters; shifting abruptly between irreverent, puerile fun, and visceral creepiness. At the same time, her work is a reminder of just how frightening and unpredictable the first years of life can be—when one lacks even a basic knowledge of the world’s relative certainties. Her sewn creations don’t stay in childhood forever. They peer through a lens that comes with maturity—recalling haptic memories from the distant past that have been colored by adult introspection, and perhaps even trauma.

            Intentionally overdetermined in their “stuffed” corporeality—the rational mind knows these temporary beings to be harmless. Yet, the organic materials drawn from life—such as alligator jaws, a boar’s skull, or a fox’s taxidermied head—are also tokens of real-world violence. The teeth that the artist has introduced into the realm of absurd fantasy have, in another lifetime, most certainly torn into actual flesh. Their presence here suggests a kind of psychophysical terror, one that bridges the animal kingdom and the human world, but which Boehmer has arranged according to the laws of a more innocent, childlike imagination.


Kelly Boehmer, Bather (sphinx), Yarn, acrylic, organza, faux fur, plaster, beads, dental impressions, and wig on canvas 66 x 42 inches, 2024

In Bather (Sphinx)—a hybrid self-portrait of the artist as her cat—Boehmer explores the dark side of wish-fulfilment. Completely unselfconscious, the cat does not harbor the sort of anxiety imposed by the ritual instruction of moral codes. Nudity is a mere fact, a state of being rather than a source of shame. Deformed by the process of achieving synthesis with one’s “spirit animal,” the artist’s face becomes twisted beyond recognition. This is the frightening result of getting what one wishes for.

            Insistently analogue, the visible stitches of crimson thread not only reinscribe the artist’s hand, but also evoke the idea of suturing in blood—a counterintuitive notion. The fact that Boehmer often repurposes her materials—yarn, fabric, and taxidermied parts—only to forge new increasingly-experimental hybrid beings, adds another layer of signification to the threads as something both life-giving, and inherently ephemeral. Although these soft bodies ironically possess the potential to long outlast the lifespan of organic flesh, their lives could, at any point, be taken away with the slightest pull of a stitch.
 

Prometheus, Yarn, taxidermy, organza, glitter, synthetic flowers, acrylic, beads, faux fur on metal, 2024
 

            It can also be said that Boehmer’s objects team with life—bursting at their self-evident seams. Materials such as beads and yarn pulsate beneath a gauzy epidermis. Such is the case of her large-scale sculpture Prometheus inspired by the Greek myth. A story about punishment as much as perseverance, the fire god must endure his punishment of an eagle devouring his liver each day, only to regenerate the organ the next morning. On a conceptual level, he shares a similar fate to Boehmer’s sculptures, and their continual reanimation in different forms. She often introduces new elements, as in this case, wherein a dog’s squeaky toy serves as Prometheus’s liver.

Her process elicits observations about our changed relationship to the materials of our youth. Bundles of yarn become “bundles of nerves” that form networks of arteries and veins; beads stand in for pustules and platelets. In this world, the hair of Raggedy Ann can double as the muscle fibers of a boar-faced Prometheus. These sculptures remind us that nostalgia can never truly deliver what it signifies. Embedded in the definition of the word is the idea of a wistful return, but also the melancholic realization that such a promise is ultimately impossible to fulfill. WM

 

 

Stephanie Huber

Specializes in twentieth century painting and film history. Her writing has been appeared in Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, Moving Image Review and Art Journal, Burlington Magazine, Hyperallergic, and ARTMargins.

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